Bryce Moore's Blog, page 64

How to Handle Facebook

More and more, it’s becoming clear to me that the free social media platforms we use ubiquitously come with a much higher cost than we initially realize. On the one hand, they do a great job of keeping me connected with people I don’t see that often. I have used Facebook and Twitter heavily for years. It’s the place where most people come across my blog articles, and I check it multiple times a day. But Facebook and Twitter are constantly making changes to the services they provide and what they choose to show you (or keep back from you). I’m more of a Facebook user than a Twitter-phile, so I’m going to focus on Facebook today.

Back in the day, Facebook seemed much simpler. You friended people you knew, and then you got to see their status updates throughout the day. Facebook, it seemed, existed primarily to connect people. These days, Facebook exists to make money, plain and simple. Judging simply from my blog statistics, the number of people seeing my blog each day has, on the whole, gone down on average, despite the fact that my friends have gone up on my primary delivery mechanism.

Granted, there are many different potential reasons for that. People could just not like what I write anymore. I’ve written my share of posts that have rubbed some people the wrong way, and it’s inevitable some readers finally decided enough was enough. It’s also possible that more people are just walking away from Facebook. I know I’ve seen a number of friends say this, so that’s definitely a number greater than zero.

But I also know a significant reason for this dip in readers is that Facebook makes sure people can’t just reach their friends easily. If someone could garner a following of loyal readers for free on Facebook, then why in the world would companies want to pay Facebook for ads? Instead, the company has a tendency to just limit the number of people who get exposed to your content, plain and simple. How do I know this? By talking to friends and family who want to stay up to date on my blog, and get frustrated that Facebook just doesn’t show them the entries. They’ve tried to favorite me. It just doesn’t work. I imagine this is because I share things so regularly.

By itself, this is annoying. What Facebook professes to do is the same as what I want it to do: let me see what my friends are saying. But what it actually does is show me stuff it thinks I’m going to like, which also happen to be stuff that’s in its best interest to show me. If that were the only problem, it would be more of an irritation than anything else. But it isn’t.

Where Facebook makes its real money is in developing profiles of its users. Hyper-targeted profiles it can then turn around and use to market things directly to you. If it knows you’ve got a thing for Magic the Gathering, then if another vendor comes along who wants to target Magic players, then Facebook can guarantee that. Add that to the ability to sell political “ads” that turn out to be nothing more than political gasoline designed to make people angry or afraid, and this place that’s supposed to be about friendship not only doesn’t deliver on showing you your friends, it has a tendency to make your friends your enemies.

So what to do about it?

Personally, I don’t think I can completely drop it. As I said, I’ve still been able to hash out some real relationships on Facebook, and I’m not interested in giving those up. Not to mention the communities I’m involved in on there. I’ll continue to post blog entries there, because I don’t think it’s realistic of me to expect people to just abandon their social media of choice in order to keep track of what I’m doing. (Though there’s a lovely technology out there that I highly recommend: feed readers. The one I use is Feedly, and basically what you do is tell it what sites you want to follow. They can be news sites, blogs you like, or anything else. You subscribe to those by entering in their website, and then it funnels all new stories to you as they come up. (For example, to subscribe to my blog, you’d enter this: http://brycemoore.com/blog/ ) With Feedly, I’m able to stay caught up on library news, tech news, movies news, my writing friends, personal friends and more. There are occasional ads stuck in there, but they’re identified as such, and they’re easy to ignore. And it pulls everything. It’s then up to me what I read and what I don’t. It’s lovely, and I highly recommend it over even simply subscribing for email deliveries of blogs.)

So there are ways out there to stay up to date on people and news in your life, as long as they actively post stuff to an independent page. For cases where you know people who don’t, then you can still use some Facebook for that. But as I’ve said before on my blog, I am quite selective about who I actually end up following on Facebook. I’ll friend anyone I know, especially if they’ve asked to be my friend. But I unfollow most people, based on a couple of criteria:

Do I know this person well enough that I really want to know their thoughts and feelings about everything under the sun? Often I’ll give people the benefit of the doubt at first, but if after a while I find them posting a lot, and it’s content that’s just not relevant to me? Unfollow.Do the interactions I’m having on Facebook with this person help or hinder my relationship with them? If all the contact I have with an old friend is Facebook, and they’re constantly writing about things that do nothing but make me start to get judgey, then I unfollow them. I’d rather maintain what relationship I have with them off Facebook than let it devolve into a failed friendship. In other words, if what I see from them on Facebook is hurting our relationship, I unfollow. Yes, I suppose that means I’m still friends with people in real life who very much disagree with me on a bunch of issues. But . . . isn’t that a good thing?

And my final Facebook approach is to try to fact check anything I see on there, and not to rely on it as my one source of news. The reality you see on Facebook is a cultivated one, fed to you by a company who’s much more interested in making money off you than in actually informing you. Stay too long in Facebook, and you start to believe anyone either believes exactly what you do, or else they’re a blithering idiot. Neither one of those is true in most cases. If you see a news story that really gets your goat, consider the source, fact check it, and look into it on a different news site.

Anyway. For those of you leaving Facebook, I totally understand. I hope you still swing by now and then to see what I’m up to, but I wish you well in your future endeavors!

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

Sea Glass Hunting on Monhegan Island

It’s interesting that sometimes it takes someone coming from hours away to get you to do the touristy things people do when they come to your state. Denisa and I have lived here for 14 years now, and we had yet to venture to any of the islands off the coast of Maine, despite the fact that many people come here to do just that. For the first while, it was because of the expense ($38 for a ferry ticket?), and then it was because we had kids of ages that didn’t really line up right to do the outing, and then it was because we were busy, and then . . .

There comes a point when you begin to convince yourself that if you haven’t done something all this time, then there must be a good reason you haven’t done it, and you stop even considering doing it anymore.

Thankfully, a friend from high school came up to visit for the weekend, and one of the things he was planning on doing was taking the ferry out to Monhegan Island, famous for its artist colony and beautiful landscape. If that had been all it was, maybe I might not have decided to go, but he also likes to go looking for sea glass, and that’s been something I’ve been curious about enough that I decided it would be fun to tag along and see how it was done. Denisa and MC came on the journey as well. (Tomas had to work, and Daniela had drama camp.)

To get out to the island, we first had to get to the ferry. We took the one out of Port Clyde, which was about a two hour drive for us. Once we arrived, I was surprised to see the range of car license plates arrayed on the dock: Georgia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and more. People were coming from all around to go to this place I’d just ignored the whole time. It took an hour to get out to the island on the ferry, though the company did fill some of that time talking about the history of the island and the surrounding area, and the lobster industry. The ride was choppy enough that by the time we arrived, my stomach was very glad we were about to get off. I had expected a large ferry without too many people on it. Instead, it was a small ferry that was pretty packed, leading me to wonder just how busy the island would be.

Monhegan is only 1.75 miles long and .75 miles wide. In my head, this was a place we’d pretty much be able to completely explore in a couple of hours. No cars are allowed over onto the island, though some of the people there do have trucks they use for transportation. There’s a small village there, with quite a few houses, though many of them seemed like they were probably rentals for people coming out to stay. Cell coverage was spotty, but existent. Restaurants were few and far between, and prices were what you’d expect on a remote island. If you’re looking to come and check out stores, this is not the place to go.

However, the island is criss-crossed with plenty of hiking trails. We set off right away into the middle of the island. I had been expecting wide trails with plenty of visibility, like most of Maine’s hiking. These trails were very narrow, and the forest in places was incredibly thick. It reminded us more of the rain forest at times than of most of the other places we’ve explored in Maine. The trails were generally easy to see, though markings were few and far between. In most places, the trail was maybe a foot wide. Some mud, because it had just rained, but the real obstacles were tree roots and rocks. It wasn’t easy hiking, by any means, but it was absolutely gorgeous.

In our three hour hike around the island, we probably saw about 5 other groups total. It was a much bigger place than I expected, and it generally felt like we were alone. If you want peaceful, secluded beauty, this is definitely a good place to go.

The sea glass hunting was less than overwhelming. We headed to Pebble Beach, which we’d heard had the best offerings on the island. We got there as the tide was coming in, which wasn’t ideal, so perhaps there was better hunting farther out, but where we were, to find any sea glass took an awful lot of combing through the boulders and pebbles. The pieces we did find were generally small: tinier than the tip of my pinky. On the other hand, we had a great time doing it. MC loved the sense of exploration, and it was fun to have something to do together. The beach was nothing like a place where I’d want to go swim. Far too rocky. (And it was only 65 degrees that day, anyway.)

(We did try one other spot I’d heard had sea glass: Fish Beach. It was very small, but it had quite a lot more glass. Unfortunately, almost all of it was pretty new. New enough that it was another place I don’t think I’d want to swim, even though it was sandier. There was just too much glass. Go figure.)

We had lunch at a small cafe. Nothing extravagant: some pizza ($3.50/slice) and wraps ($8.00/each). The food was fine. We might have gone to some of the other restaurants, but finding out where they were was a struggle. (Remember: bad internet), and the prices seemed like more than we were really up for at the moment. One of the best things I bought the whole time was the $1 map of the island that included all the hiking trails. We used that a ton, and I’m sure we would have gotten hopelessly lost without it. (We’d also considered bringing Ferris on the trip, but I’m very glad we didn’t. He would have been far too hyper on the ferry, and he would have gone crazy on the island. We’d tried taking him on a short hike a few days before. It was sensory overload for the puppers.)

In the end, we stayed five hours, and I think that was about right. I’d considered coming out to stay with the family on the island at some point, but I don’t know that I will, having been there. I loved the outing, but I think I’d likely get bored if I were there for too long. (Though maybe some boredom and internet-free time would be just the thing. I’ll keep thinking about that.) I’m sure it would have gorgeous night skies if we were to stay over, though it was foggy and overcast the entire time we were there. (Luck of the draw.)

Overall, it was a terrific outing, and a great change of pace. If you haven’t been, I’d definitely recommend it, and it’s got me thinking about other outings we might do in the future . . .

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

Hurray for Second Chances: Return of the Bundt Cake

Last Sunday, Daniela and I made another foray into co-baking, and it ended with a pretty spectacular fail. (I should have taken a picture of it, in hindsight. Just imagine a half-baked bundt cake plopped upside down into another pan, and then baked again. It was bad.) I’d say it left a bad taste in our mouth, but that would be a lie, since we ate it the rest of the week, and it tasted incredible. This week, Daniela wanted to give it another go. Not with a new recipe. With the same one we’d messed up the week before.

I’m all about learning from my mistakes, so I readily agreed. For as bad as last week went, it wouldn’t have taken much for this week to go better, but it went pretty much perfectly. For one thing, we both knew what we were doing when we were making the cake. Last week was tricky, but this time, we already had it down to a process. The peanut butter filling also went off without a hitch. (We used chunky peanut butter this time, and these days we’re almost only buying the natural kind (the one you have to stir). I imagine smooth Skippy would make it even easier, though I did like the crunch of the natural after all was said and done.)

This time, we only filled the Bundt pan 2/3 of the way, and we used the leftover batter (of which there was a TON) to make 12 peanut butter-filled chocolate cupcakes. The cake was done in an hour, and the cupcakes were done in 20 minutes. When the cake was finished, we were both a little apprehensive. We used a wooden skewer to check it this time (much longer than a toothpick, to ensure we weren’t missing any pockets of raw batter), and we checked it about five times in five different places. Each time it came out clean. Picturing another mess, we steeled ourselves, flipped the cake out . . . and it was perfectly done. It cracked a little on the way out, but Daniela made a ganache to cover that up.

Of course, this wouldn’t be a real baking experience if we didn’t make a goof here or there. This time, it was that we forgot to get extra butter, so we didn’t have enough for the ganache recipe we usually use. Daniela decided to pull an audible, mixing oil and chocolate chips and milk in amounts that felt generally good to her. It seemed to have turned out fine at first, but it was done well before the cake was cool enough to put it on. Once the cake had cooled, it had solidified, and when she went to reheat it, the oil separated. It looked very (very) gloppy.

I tasted it, and it was super dark as well. We were also out of powdered sugar, and we only had about a half cup of white sugar left in the house. I threw caution to the wind and added all the white sugar we had left, and Daniela added some more milk, hoping that would fix it.

It did not. It tasted good, but there was no way it was going to turn out as a ganache. After some reflection, we decided to try whipping the heck out of it in the stand mixer, thinking that might be enough to mix the oil back in. A few minutes later, that turned out to be successful. We ended up with a (very) dark, smooth ganache that went perfectly over the cake. I’m chalking that up to divine intervention.

In any case, I was happy to have such a great object lesson to talk to Daniela about how to respond when things go wrong. Take some time away, think about what you could have done differently, and then try again, incorporating those changes. We still had to improvise, but the end result was delicious.

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

TV Review: The Goes Wrong Show

When I find a British show that I love, my biggest complaint is always (inevitably) that it’s just too short. Seasons across the Atlantic are like five episodes long. Six, if you’re lucky. Thankfully with The Goes Wrong Show, it’s a “long” season of 6 whopping episodes, available on Amazon Prime even as we speak. And if I were you (which I realize I’m not), I would stop whatever you’re doing this instant and go watch this show instead.

Oh wait. That would mean you’d stop reading my blog, wouldn’t it? Well, whatever you planning to do after you finished reading my blog, I would watch this show instead. Someone had recommended it to me (I’ve sadly forgotten who), and I decided to watch it when I got around to it. Don’t be like me. This is some of the funniest stuff I watched in a good long while.

The premise is straightforward: a fairly amateur acting troupe in England prepares a weekly live play that they film in front of audience and then broadcast to the nation. Except their entire production is just plain awful. They’ve got set design folks who make an absolute mess of things, their actors are all highly unprofessional, the writing is a mess, and pretty much everything you can imagine ends up going wrong. (It couldn’t have taken them long to come up with the title for the show.)

A lot of the time I have trouble really laughing at people in painful situations. I can’t typically last too much of The Office for that reason. It’s so uncomfortable for me to watch people making such poor life choices, and then laugh at them. However, with this show, I don’t have to worry about that. I’m not laughing at real people’s lives (even if they’re fictional), I’m laughing at people who are just flat out bad at what they do professionally. For some reason, that makes all the difference.

It also helps that a lot of the humor from the show comes from things other than just “these people can’t act” over and over. The set design crew makes tons of errors, like building a court room where they thought the measurements were in inches, not feet. Or building a dining room vertically, so the table’s on the wall. Not every single episode is a grand slam, but they’re all a lot of fun, and I was often laughing so hard I had to pause it.

Fair warning: the humor does get a bit ribald now and then. We watched it with the whole family, and there was a time or two when I felt like it crossed the line for MC (though it likely just sailed right past her), but I don’t like wholeheartedly recommending something and then risking it being too much for some people. I’d still say it’s squarely in PG range, and it is indeed rated TV-PG, so maybe I’m being too fussy.

In any cast, I gave it a 10/10, and I can’t wait until I can watch season 2.

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

Movie Review: The Little Mermaid

I first watched The Little Mermaid in the theaters when it came out. It was a very big deal at the time. A return to form for Disney, and it launched the string of successful animated movies that Disney would create next: Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, and The Lion King. I was a huge Disney fan growing up, and I still am. However, I was only 11 when it first came out, and while I’d definitely watched it multiple times since then, it has probably been 15-20 years since I last saw it. A lot can change with a person in that amount of time. Would the movie still hold up?

In my memory, it was this fast-paced comedy musical romance thing. The romance wasn’t that important to me as an 11 year old, but the music and comedy were. “Under the Sea” was so much fun, and so was “Les Poisson.” Ursula was a great villain. And rewatching it last night, all of that was definitely still the same. The music and animation were still fantastic. The plot . . . ?

That let me down quite a bit.

Who, exactly, are we supposed to root for in this movie? The obvious answer is Ariel, but what does she do that’s actually worth rooting for? She’s duped by a sea witch into giving up her voice (for a man she’s never talked to and has interacted with for a total of about 5 seconds). But I suppose you can at least argue up to that point she’s doing something. She has a goal (beautifully stated in “Part of Your World”), and she’s working toward that goal. Except the goal changes. It stops being about living her dream of living on land, and turns instead into somehow getting random prince boy to marry her.

Once she’s on land, she does absolutely nothing to advance her goal. Well, she stares lovingly into Eric’s eyes, but assuming you don’t count that as an active protagonist, she’s pretty much useless after she’s got legs. Sebastian does a fair attempt of helping her out, using his ninja composing skills to inspire a bunch of strange aquatic creatures into an impromptu serenade, but Sebastian is most definitely not the main character of the movie. True, he does change (going from being self-centered to actually risking his life so Ariel can get Eric), but . . . to say he’s anything more than a sidekick would be a stretch. (Though it makes me wonder how cool it could be if when Disney did the live action remake, they instead focused it all on Sebastian . . .)

In the end, who kills Ursula? Eric does. And what has he done to earn that? Not a whole lot. I realize this is far from a problem unique to The Little Mermaid, and that it’s long been lobbed as a critique of Disney movies, but I tend to hold movies that were made in the 80s to a higher standard of enlightenment than those made decades before then. And I get it: it’s a kids movie. It presents a simplified version of falling in love and living happily ever after. But I went into the movie knowing all the complaints people have made about Disney princesses of yore, and the counterarguments people have made that “it’s just a kids movie,” and I was curious what I would think about it.

The thing that really sealed the deal for me was talking to Daniela about it after the movie. She had no real patience for the plot either. Would I boycott this movie and refuse to let my kids watch it? Of course not. But I can’t watch it today without seeing the weaknesses of the movie, regardless of how I once watched it. Comparing it to Moana or Frozen or Tangled or any number of more recent Disney movies, and I for one am grateful they stopped with the damsel in distress plot and went with something people can really admire.

In the end, this one’s just a 7/10 for me. Still love the art and music. Wish the plot were better.

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

Adventures in Bundt Baking

Sunday, Daniela and I decided we wanted to make a cake for our Fourth of July dinner later that day. After debating the merits and proper “Americanness” of various cake and frosting combinations, we settled on a bundt cake (because we hadn’t made one before) that would be chocolate with a peanut butter filling. How hard could it be?

(Note: When you’re setting out to try something new in baking, the phrase “how hard could it be?” should usually tip you off that it will, in fact, be much harder than you think. Because “how hard could it be?” doesn’t actually set a limit, you know.)

Since it was Sunday, we were limited to using only the ingredients that were in our house already. We weren’t going to make a special trip to the store for anything. This made some problems for us, since the recipe we found that we really wanted to use was this one in the New York Times. However, that one called for cream cheese for the peanut butter filling, and heavy cream for the glaze, neither of which were in our fridge. So I called an audible and used the chocolate cake recipe from the NYT, and swapped out the peanut butter filling for this one (that I didn’t want to use the chocolate cake recipe for, since it was just a box cake, and who needs that?)

We got to work on baking. Everything went off without a hitch. It was complicated, sure, but nothing the two of us couldn’t handle. It came time to fill the bundt pan, and we hit a slight snag: we had too much cake batter. So much, that it filled the pan right to the top. I knew from experience that cakes typically rise, so for a moment, I was concerned this was too much batter.

“Maybe it just doesn’t rise that much,” Daniela pointed out. That seemed like a good enough answer for me. Into the oven it went!

An hour later, and the cake had not, in fact, flowed all over the oven. It had risen a little, but mostly it had puffed up in a ring around the middle. We took it out and tested it with a toothpick. The recipe called for baking at least an hour, so I was skeptical that it would have been done already. However, no matter how many times we put the toothpick in, it always came out clean.

“I guess we should just dump it out and see what happens,” I said. Daniela concurred. (Note: “Dump it out and see what happens” might not be the best approach for baking, but we’d been baking for a while by then. We were tired.)

We got out a cooling rack, I paused for a moment, and then turned the bundt pan over in one fell swoop.

Reader, the top two or three inches of that cake (the bottom of it, once it was turned out) was done to perfection. The peanut butter filling was great. But the part that was beneath the peanut butter filling? That was still molten cake batter. It oozed right through the cooling rack and spread out in a puddle all over the counter.

If I had been left to my own devices, I think I would have given up then. The beautiful bundt cake we’d worked so hard on was more of an amorphous cake-like mass. There was no way it was getting back in the oven in anything remotely bundt shaped. Denisa, quick thinker that she is, sprang into action. “Just put it back in a regular cake pan and finish baking it,” she said. “It’s still hot.”

That seemed like a ridiculous idea. Keep baking it? How do you bake what’s rapidly turning into a raw pancake with some chocolate and peanut butter cake heaped in the middle of it? But it was better than my idea of just giving up, so we let Denisa give it a try. We scooped up pieces of the cake, stuck them in a new pan, and then she used a spoon to get as much of the batter in as she could.

Back in the oven it went.

Twenty minutes later or so, the cake was finished. It looked about how you’d expect it would. Spots of it still had ridges from the bundt pan, and other parts looked like someone had just sort of thrown cake batter around and hoped for the best. In short, it looked like a disaster.

The taste, however . . . The taste was just right. Chocolate and peanut buttery goodness we’ve been enjoying since. When it’s dark and you’re watching a movie, it’s not like you need to look at your cake to enjoy it, you know?

In hindsight, we should have filled the pan only two thirds of the way, and cooked the rest of the batter in cupcake form. We think there was just too much batter for the heat to really get everywhere it needed to. But despite how big of a pain it all was, I think Daniela and I might give it another go at some point.

It really is a good tasting cake . . .

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

A Tribute to Richard Donner

Richard Donner passed away yesterday. I realize there are many who won’t recognize his name, but he did a whole lot for fantasy in film, and I wanted to take a minute to appreciate that. When the Christopher Reeve Superman came out in 1978, it was the first time a studio had really thrown money at a superhero film. As we all know (or should know, at any rate), simply throwing money at film isn’t a formula for guaranteed success. (Waterworld, anyone?) It would have been very easy to have this first superhero effort go seriously wrong.

Warner Bros. picked Richard Donner to helm the film. What had he done before that? He’d directed The Omen, a small budget ($3 million) horror movie that grossed $60 million. He’d also directed a whole slew of television episodes, ranging from Perry Mason to Get Smart to The Twilight Zone. Superman had a budget of $55 million, so much bigger expectations. Donner took the movie and made it a huge success. ($300 million. That might not seem too impressive, until you realize that would be $1.2 billion today.)

In many ways, Donner set the stage for the future superhero movies to come. The mixture of comedy and action. Special effects but retaining a focus on character as well. (Though of course, the biggest contribution was proving a superhero movie could make a whole lot of money. That’s the biggest thing a movie can do to ensure other movies like it will be made.) I loved that movie, and spent many hours pretending I was Superman, even though I’d never cracked open a page of the comics.

If Superman were the only movie Donner had done, he would have still been very influential on the genre. But he went on to direct a slew of great films: Ladyhawke (straight up fantasy with Matthew Broderick and Michelle Pfeiffer), The Goonies(!), Lethal Weapon, Scrooged (one of the cooler (and more bizarre) Christmas Carol adaptations, with Bill Murray), and Maverick (comic Western with Mel Gibson and Jodie Foster).

The Goonies is flat out incredible, and I’d argue it played a role in the development of YA as a genre. Entirely kid-centric, with no parents barging in to solve the problems. Fast paced and snappy, but still recognizing the kids as real people with real wants and concerns. I’m not saying the whole genre stems from the movie (that’s clearly wrong), but rather that its acceptance and growth were helped along by the success of The Goonies. At least for yours truly, that movie defined in many ways what I want to get out of a YA adventure. (Plus, the movie gave us Sean Astin . . .)

These are all movies I grew up with, and which I’ve watched multiple times. To have them all come from the same director speaks to his ability to really make films that resonated with me. Were all his movies great? Well, no. Let’s not talk about The Toy or Timeline. But still, he had a great track record of success. If you haven’t seen some of these, I encourage you go and check them out. I just might have to fire up The Goonies tonight in his honor.

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

One Eileen to Rule Them All: 30 Different Versions of Come On Eileen

A friend posted about a polka version of Come On Eileen yesterday on Facebook, and suddenly it reminded me of my personal favorite version (the ska cover by Save Ferris.) And so of course I had to look it up on YouTube, which led me to poke around to see what other covers of the song were done. A different friend does a yearly Christmas carol bracket challenge, where she posts about 30-40 different versions of the same carol. They’re paired up one by one, and people vote to determine which is the best version. She’s done it for years, and I always am entertained to see the sheer variety of versions out there.

And that made me wonder. “Just how many different versions of Come On Eileen are out there?” We’re talking significantly different. People who aren’t just playing the song like a cover, but who really added their own flavor to it. Thankfully, the internet was invented so I could answer this sort of question quickly and easily. And because I personally found it fascinating, I’m here today to share those results with you. I don’t think I’ll set up a whole bracket or anything (because that’s seriously a huge endeavor), but I’d like to do a poll to see which version you like the most. One vote per person. Vote on here, Twitter, or Facebook, but only vote once.

Before we begin, a warning. There are sooooooo many versions of Come On Eileen out there. Seriously. The farther I went, the more versions popped up. This is the tip of the iceberg, folks. It makes me wonder how many covers there are of other quintessential 80s songs out there, but I’m afraid to go looking. For today’s post, we’re just looking at this one, and just the ones I found that stood out to me the most.

Ready?

First off, of course, we have the original. Recorded in 1982 by the Dexys Midnight Runners, it was all over the 80s. It sets the stage for everything that comes after, and I still think it’s one of the best versions out there. How can you go wrong with the original?

The cover song I’d already heard and preferred heading into this deep dive was the one by Save Ferris:

But then I came across this one by Ala’SKA, and it really impressed me as well:

And I’d be remiss to omit the version that started me down this rabbit hole. Polkadelphia’s polka arrangement:

But what if you don’t like 80s music? What if you’re in the mood for something a little more . . . heavy? There’s this version by The Venetia Fair:

BluePearl made a rock version:

Texas decided to take that edge off and add more of . . . something else:

There are also more independent efforts out there, brought to us by the wonders of YouTube. How about this broken down synth/guitar version? I really like the groove it gets into.

Then again, what do a synthesizer and a guitar have when they’re up against two guitars, a snare drum, and . . . an accordion? Schank has this almost unseen version from what appears to be a sports bar in Bonn.

There are also version that jettison instruments completely. Here’s a standard a capella group approach by Streetcorner Symphony:

Then again, maybe you liked that version, but thought what it really needed was skateboards? No problem. The X-Factor has your back.

We can do the reverse, of course. Ditch the singing and focus on just an instrument. Like, say, a guitar:

The only problem is . . . I’ve got a fever. And the only prescription, is more mandolin. (Seriously. Way more.)

Or was it more brass?

No. It was definitely more cellos. (Included for Daniela’s listening pleasure.)

Speaking of banjos, this version was one that actually really impressed me.

This one deserves a mention, because who can’t get behind a sports arena organ?

The more I searched–the deeper I dove–the more convinced I became that there’s pretty much a Come On Eileen version done in any style you could imagine. How about . . . harp?

Chamber quartet?

Then there’s this one, that . . . I have a hard time putting into words. Slow down the song, take out most of the instruments, and add a lot more breathiness:

What about people who are huge Minecraft fans? Isn’t there a place for them in all this Eileen madness? Of course there is!

How about Atari, instead?

Then again, I know there are some people out there who listened to Mambo No. 5 and decided they wanted more Lou Bega. He heard their call:

What about fans of Sugarland and Sara Bareilles? Yup. They’ve covered it too:

But perhaps you heard the original, and you thought it was way too edgy. You wanted to make it something . . . more appropriate. I have a hard time describing what Michael English did to the song . . .

Don’t you love the violin at the beginning of the original? Doesn’t it give you serious Irish music vibes? Well, what if we swapped it with a penny whistle and translated the song into Irish Gaelic? Wish granted!

Or maybe you don’t care for music that much, but what you really like is England soccer? The band 4-4-2 adapted the song into an anthem for England in the European Championships in 2004. It generally follows the original, but has completely new words.

There are other straight up spoofs out there. I mean, what do you do when you realize COVID-19 matches up exactly with “Come On, Eileen”?

But that can’t be the only spoof, can it? Of course not. There are more spoofs out there (so many more). Even the Count gets in on the action:

I’m going to spare you from the rest of them. Instead, let’s bring this full circle. The original band (now named just Dexys) was still performing and touring through the mid-2010’s at least. (They released their fifth album then, even.) And here they are in 2012 performing live.

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

Coming Up with a Character: Behind the Scenes on The Perfect Place to Die

We’re coming up on a month to go until THE PERFECT PLACE TO DIE comes out. Yesterday I got my author copies, and the book looks fantastic. The cover really pops, and the illustrations I commissioned turned out really nicely, as well. (They’re floor plans of the infamous Murder Castle.) Seeing the starred review from Booklist on there definitely gives me warm fuzzies. It’s in paperback, not hardcover, so it’ll be gentle on your wallet, as well. Now I need to figure out what to do with 25 copies of the book. I imagine I’ll hold onto them to give them away when I get to that halcyon day when I can actually visit classrooms again . . .

If you want to get a sense of the book beyond the synopsis, Daily Dead just posted an excerpt from the middle of the book. It’s exclusive to their site, so I encourage you to head over there to check it out.

In the meantime, I also wanted to give you something over here focused on the book today. I thought I might talk a bit about the main character. This was the first time I’ve gone back to a female protagonist in a good long while. It was also only the second time I’d ventured into historical fiction. Trying to get into the head of a 17 year-old girl in 1893 was an interesting experience, to say the least, and sticking with a first person point of view made that even more complicated. But I really wanted the first person for a couple of reasons: I feel like it’s a POV I excel in, and I wanted the immediacy you get with first person, especially since she’d be going up against a historical villain who many readers would already recognize.

(Reading over some early reviews, that aspect of the book hasn’t clicked with some readers. I get it: how do you write a suspense book when the audience all knows who the killer is, but the main character doesn’t? In the end, I decided to approach it like James Cameron’s Titanic. Yes, everyone knows the ship is going down. But we don’t know who might survive. Knowing the ship sinks is no reason to hold it against the people for getting on board. They don’t know that. Likewise, Etta (the main character in my book) only knows her sister has disappeared. Plus, she’s living in an era long before the grisly stories of murders and killers would become common place.)

Setting out, I had the premise of the book and that was about it. A teenage girl goes undercover at Murder Castle in Chicago to find out the fate of her missing sister. It’s a great premise, and it had a lot of promise, but there’s a whole ton to dig into before you can make an actual novel out of it. How much of the history was I going to follow? Who was the girl? Was she on to what was happening at the hotel, or didn’t she know. (As I said, I went with “she didn’t know,” because if she knows, then you have to ask how she knows. That implies proof of some sort, or at least her witnessing something first hand. If she’s got something that strong, then it wouldn’t be terribly difficult to have her just go to the police. End of story. Who wants to read that?)

One of the works that really helped me figure out how to approach this was actually Charles Portis’ True Grit. I first encountered the work in the John Wayne adaptation, which was fine, but I loved the Coen adaptation that came out in 2010 enough for me to want to read the source material. I adored the book, and I was blown away by the main character: 14 year-old Mattie Ross. The setting was 1878, but it was close enough to the time period I’d be in to give me some inspiration.

One of my favorite parts is the horse trading scene, hands down:

When I first watched the movie, I was convinced the Coen Bros. must have done the dialogue for the scene, but when I read the book, I realized it was practically all Portis. (I should have remembered the same scene from the Wayne adaptation in 1969, but on the other hand, it isn’t nearly as memorable.)

See what I mean?

With that in mind, it helped bring the rest of my book into focus. I actually began to think of it in terms of a western. Not that I’d be having shoot outs and horse trading, but this was set in the tail end of the Wild West. Just in Chicago, not rolling prairies. I wanted a strong protagonist, because any 17 year-old girl who was going to try and make her way through Chicago in 1893 was going to have to have a really strong backbone and plenty of persistence. But I didn’t want her to be too experienced, because I wanted this to be a challenge for her. I didn’t want her to be an ace detective, or to have extensive knowledge of the ins and outs of the city. I thought it would be better to have her be much more out of place.

At the same time, I was trying to come up with her name. I’m not a huge fan of naming things. It feels like such a commitment. And in this case, I had to have a name that was right for the period. What names were popular back then? When I was writing, I was also doing some family history work on the side, and it suddenly hit me: I could just check out what some of my ancestors from back then were named. In the end I settled on my great-great grandmother, Zurretta Eliza Palmer. (And I used her real life sister’s name (Ruby) as the name of the sister in the books as well.)

As soon as that connection was made, I made another. I could have my main character come from Utah. I was familiar with what life was like there at that time period (generally), and it would certainly make for a good fish-out-of-water background for the main character and her sister. (In the course of writing the actual book, I began to feel progressively guiltier for everything I was putting my great-great grandmother’s namesake through. (Imagine if Stephen King decided to name Wendy Torrance in The Shining after a family member. Yikes.) Nothing about the character was based on her other than the name. Hopefully she understands.

In any case, once I had those pieces in place, the book began to move forward. Knowing where a character starts and where they are later on in the book does a lot to give you a sense of trajectory. I might write about that later, but that’s all the time I have for now. The book comes out August 3rd!

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

A Very COVID Timeline

Not that we haven’t been open already to the university crowd, but starting Thursday (July 1st), Mantor Library (where I’m the director) will be back open to the public to use, with no phone call or reservation needed. This is the last major step toward “reopening” that I think we’ll take (well, aside from the university lifting its mask mandate at some point.)

In honor of the occasion, I thought it might be interesting to see just what the timeline has been for me over the pandemic. A little waltz down memory lane, to remind myself of how far we’ve come. In some ways, I’ve been trying to resist thinking about all of it. But I think it would be a good activity to review just what happened when. And lucky me, I keep a daily journal (beyond the blog), so reconstructing all of it shouldn’t be too hard . . .

Ready? Deep breath. Here we go.

January-February 2020–I watch with growing concern as more and more reports of this new disease start to circulate. I remember reading Reddit posts when it was just in China. Someone had supposedly smuggled out a video of Chinese hospitals overwhelmed, contrary to what most reports were claiming. I wasn’t sure how accurate the video was, but it was alarming to say the least. I watched it move from China to Europe and over to the US, though it had yet to actually affect me in any immediate way other than general anxiety.March 10, 2020–The first time “coronavirus” appears in my journal. Tomas had a robotics meet in Massachusetts that was cancelled due to it. He was bummed, to say the least. So was I. March 11, 2020–The university tells us all students will be in quarantine when they return from spring break, which was slated to run from March 16th-March 20th. I scramble to try and figure out what that’s going to mean for the library.March 12, 2020–The university changes course, deciding students will leave for the semester and not come back to campus after spring break. We’ll be switching to remote learning for the rest of the semester, instead. (Also, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints cancels all in-person meetings worldwide. There was a fair bit of scrambling to figure out what that was going to mean for me and my family.)March 13, 2020–We find out our school district intends to close for “a couple of weeks” to do some deep-cleaning. (As a side note, this really illustrates how up in a tizzy everyone was about COVID at this point. The disease was almost non-existent in Maine (we were averaging two cases/day). True, that wasn’t nothing, but in all likelihood, there was nothing in the school to deep clean. (Well, not from a COVID viewpoint, at least . . .) Still, things were very upsetting, and we were definitely in the “something must be done, and this is something” mindset. Taking two weeks to figure stuff out made a lot of sense.)March 18, 2020–We close the library to everyone. This is my first day of working from home. The library is still staffed with workers to keep the books moving (requests, orders, interlibrary loan, etc.), but the doors are locked to everyone else. I decide to stop trimming my beard until I have to go back to work in person.

Please note the huge gap that now comes in the timeline. About four months of just staying at home, day in, day out. That was . . . unpleasant. One of the worst things was being uncertain when, exactly, it would be over. At first I thought we’d be able to make our planned trip to Disney World over July 4th, no problem. Then that seemed like a 50/50 shot. Then . . .

July 9, 2020–We break down and buy a dog, even if we won’t be able to pick him up until August. Thus, our “typical American COVID summer” is complete.July 15, 2020–In preparation for in-person church coming up (and because I had long since discovered that yes, Virginia, there is a beard length Bryce really doesn’t want to have to deal with), I trim my beard again. There is much rejoicing.July 19, 2020–I go back to church in-person for the first time. Meetings are capped at 25 people. We had been doing Zoom church up until then, having switched over a week or two after the in-person meetings shut down. For the next while, we go to church in-person once or twice a month. No singing. Face masks required.August 12, 2020–My first day back in the library in-person. August 15, 2020–We pick up Ferris and bring him home. Puppy!August 17, 2020–The library opens up via keycard to all UMF students, staff, and faculty. The public can call and get curbside checkout of materials, and they can make a request to come into the building for specific reasons. In practice, this meant around 5 people from the public ended up coming in over the next academic year. Each one came to use our microfilm collection, which had to be used in person. I didn’t turn down other requests; I just didn’t get any. Most people seemed reluctant to come to campus for fear of COVID. Most employees thought we had slim chances of having the semester last past the middle of October. The plan is to have the semester run until Thanksgiving, and then be remote after that. September 8, 2020–The kids go back to school in person. Tomas is there every Monday and Tuesday (remote the rest of the week). Daniela and MC go in person every other day, and are remote the other days. For Tomas and Daniela, “remote” means “sitting in front of a computer in a Zoom meeting.” For MC, it means “no school.” (Practically speaking. I think she had a few “assignments” every day, but nothing that really took MC longer than a bit to complete.)

Another huge break in the timeline here. In a way, so much happened in these six months. In another way, almost nothing did. Reading over my journal entries for this period is actually kind of traumatic. You can see things deteriorate in a way I just was unable to recognize at the time. Maybe I’ll write more about that at some point, but I’m not up to it right now.

The good news was that the university had its classes as scheduled, and we made it the whole time with that plan. It worked for the next semester as well. The kids’ school also went off without a hitch (more or less). We were doing Zoom church still, though at some point they raised the cap to 50 people. (I forget exactly when.)

March 20, 2021–Denisa and I get our first vaccine shots. March 21, 2021–We have our last Zoom church. The Maine CDC raised its cap on people in a building to a point where anyone who wanted to come to church in person, could come to church. Zoom broadcasts would still be happening, but my family and I would be able to go in person each week. (Still masked, still socially distanced in the building, still no singing.)March 28, 2021–We had our first “no cap” in-person church. About 75 people showed up, more people than I’d been around in a good long while.April 16, 2021–Denisa and I get our second shot. Two weeks until we’re “fully vaccinated”!May 10, 2021–With the semester over, the library “opens” to the public. People can now come for any reason, though they do have to make an appointment ahead of time to come. Masks are still required.May 9, 2021–Our trip to Puerto Rico, which really represented the end of the pandemic for us in many ways. Things began to feel more and more normal.May 30, 2021–Mask mandate is now lifted for church. Singing resumes, as well as in-person second hour meetings.July 1, 2021–The library doors go back to being unlocked to everyone (during our open hours). In preparation for this, the furniture returns to its normal positions throughout the building. (Thanks, Facilities!) The library feels like it’s largely back to normal as well, even though masks are still required. (And there’s no sign of that being done away with any time soon at the moment.)

This list is in no way comprehensive. There are definitely some events I’ve left out, but it gives a good general overview of the arc of this whole thing. It’s a good reminder that even in world-changing events, a family still finds its equilibrium and hammers out a new normal. Looking back on it all, I’m impressed we managed to do as much as we did. I finished the final draft of one book (coming out in a bit more than a month!) and the first draft of another, then did two more drafts of that book to get it ready for my editor to see. The kids came through everything with all A’s in school, even. Incredibly proud of the whole family for banding together and barreling through.

Here’s hoping the next while sees more bright days ahead. It’s going to take some time to get over all of this. Right now, I feel like I think I’m back to normal, but every now and then I’m reminded of just how abnormal things were, and how “normal” now is really just a codeword for “better than things were a year ago.”

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.